


straight up freelancer justice

by eggstasy



Series: Blood Gulch Freelancers [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: AU, Gen, what if the sim troopers were freelancers tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6179176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggstasy/pseuds/eggstasy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're...eccentric, sure, but they'd really shaped up since her transfer two years ago.  Carolina can't understand why the Director refuses to provide more funding for their branch when the results they produce are directly tied to whether or not their needs are met.  All they'd wanted was a little more detailed instruction.  ...all right and a few extra creature comforts, but when a person has to live cooped up on a small station in the middle of nowhere, leaving only to complete missions, it isn't too demanding a request to make.</p><p>She still won't file the paperwork for a chocolate fountain, no matter how much Michigan complains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	straight up freelancer justice

 

“The power to run at the speed of sound...but only in really unsafe conditions. Like a snowstorm or something.”

Michigan leans back and folds his arms. The Pelican shakes and jostles him in his harness. “What if you start running in a snowstorm and end up running out of it in ten minutes?”

“As soon as you get out of the storm, you’re back to normal speeds.”

“Mmm yup, that’s a shitty power.”

“Oooh ooh, I’ve got one! For real this time.”

Idaho sighs. “Okay, fine. Go ahead.”

Iowa leans forward and spreads his hands theatrically. “The power to make clothes whenever you want, but you can _only_ make them in full outfits at a time, and they’re _all_ Chantilly lace.”

“That is the _dumbest-”_

“You said a good-”

“What is your deal with goddamn Chantilly-”

“Listen listen! Guys!” Iowa jumps up- well, _attempts_ to jump up before he remembers his harness too late and smacks his chestplate into the stop bar. “You can’t make your _entire outfit_ out of Chantilly lace! It’s an _accent_ , an _accent piece!_ ”

“Iowa you were _banned_ from playing because you always come up with the dumbest shit-”

“I thought that was the point!”

“-and nobody _understands_ your dumb shit,” Rhode Island finishes. “You’re worse than Massachusetts.”

“Are we talking about me?”

“No Chus, go back to your music.”

“Okay.”

“Now while I agree that Iowa doesn’t quite grasp the point of this completely meaningless exercise,” Montana growls.

“Rude,” mutters Michigan.

“-I gotta ask you this.”

Rhode Island sighs. “Here we go.”

“Why the _Samuel L. Jackson_ are we sharin' dropship space with a buncha damn dirty Blues?!”

“Tan,” Carolina explains in that ‘I’m patient because I’m not allowed to kill you’ voice she’s likely patented, “while competition within the ranks is allowed to exist for the purpose of personal betterment, I’m going to remind you just one last time: we’re not at war with _each other._ Team exercises _do not_ extend beyond the training room. Keep your hostilities to the appropriate mission-approved targets, understood?”

“Yeah seriously, give it a rest!” Virginia sniffs, folding her arms. “Old people are _so_ stupid sometimes.”

“Ahh, ignore him. Montana’s just pissed off because Blue Team got all the _ladies._ ”

“ _Some of us_ have legitimate reasons to be pissed off,” Michigan shoots back at Rhode accusingly, “considering you’re _banging my sister._ ”

“Uh, like, I can pick who I want to bang, thank _you_ very much.”

“At least have some taste! _Rhode Island?_ Couldn’t you have at least gotten with Texas or something?!”

“Not for lack of trying,” Texas snorts as she adjusts the sights on her sniper rifle.

“Well, I _also_ tried to get with Chus, but-”

“ _Massachusetts?!_ ”

“Oh _god-_ ”

“Awww!”

“No Io, not _aww!_ Freakin’ _Mass?!_ ”

“I said,” Virginia yells over the Red Team hubbub, “I tried to get with him but apparently he’s not even a little bit into me! Which y’know, _kinda rude_ but what am _I_ supposed to do about it?”

“Telling you he's not interested isn't rude,” Carolina points out dryly, “and fraternization within the ranks is actually against regulations anyway. Stop sleeping with Rhode.”

“ _What?!_ If we can't fuck anybody in the Project then _who are we supposed to fuck?!_ ”

“That's against the law! We have _rights!_ ”

Carolina ignores them. “Harnesses up, we drop in five.” She watches as her agents unlock their harnesses and gather up their weaponry. They're...eccentric, sure, but they'd really shaped up since her transfer two years ago. She can't understand why the Director refuses to provide more funding for their branch when the results they produce are directly tied to whether or not their needs are met. All they'd wanted was a little more detailed instruction. ...all right and a few extra creature comforts, but when a person has to live cooped up on a small station in the middle of nowhere, leaving only to complete missions, it isn't too demanding a request to make.

She still won't file the paperwork for a chocolate fountain, no matter how much Michigan complains.

“I never want to discuss Caboose’s libido ever again.” Rhode Island shudders as he checks the energy sword at his hip.

“No names on the field,” Carolina chastises, smacking the back of his helmet on her way over to the drop bay doors. She taps Massachusetts on the knee as she passes. “Look alive, Chus. We’re headed out.”

“Okay!” Mass touches the side of his helmet before unlocking his harness and standing, stretching out muscles stiff from sitting still.

The Pelican shakes and dips dangerously but the agents just sway with the movement as they check weapons and line up in formation. They're all familiar with how the UNSC standard dropships fly…or don’t, as is almost as often the case during their missions.

“Mitch, the second you seen an opening I want you to slip in.”

“ _Bow chika bow wow._ ”

After nearly two years of careful conditioning with her particular pack of animals, Carolina had learned that pretending nobody said anything is sometimes the most effective way to keep a conversation on track. “Monitor _everything._ I don’t want the opposition to _sneeze_ without me knowing.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Michigan yawns boredly, shouldering his rifle.

“Ida? You’re data mining. The second you find a server with an HQ uplink I want to you rip every piece of useful intel out of there you can. If you find anything having to do with the objective, contact me _immediately._ ”

“Uh, I’m going to have cover for that, right?”

“Io, Tan, you’re his cover.”

Montana pumps his shotgun. “CQC’s my middle name! Had it changed when I was twenty. Heh heh.”

“Always happy to watch someone’s rear!”

“I don’t need cover, I changed my mind,” Idaho squeaks, but Carolina is already moving on.

“Virg, Rhode, you’re both with me. We are to locate and secure the objective, but I don’t want to give these guys a chance to regroup and retaliate. I might send the two of you out to make noise elsewhere so keep an eye out for expensive things to break.”

Virginia pounds her fist into her glove; Carolina can hear the grin in her voice. “Team Fuckbuddies is on the job!”

“Stop that.” Carolina turns away. “Texas, you know what to do.”

“Sure do, ‘boss,’” Texas drawls and the two agents exchange a long, tense look.

“Okay, break it up.” Rhode steps between them. “Ladies, ladies, you’re _both_ pretty.”

Carolina lets Texas handle smacking Rhode Island around in favor of leaning into Mass's arm to catch his attention. Carolina isn't much of a physically affectionate person, but in his case it's necessary. He pays closer attention when she is. “Do you know what to do?”

Massachusetts nods. “Make a door. Stay near you or Tex. Try not to shoot anybody in the back.”

“Yeah, _try_ being the operative word.” Somehow Rhode had managed to escape Texas just in time to rile Mass up, _of course,_ because nothing could be easy in Carolina's life. “I wonder if that 'days gone by without friendly fire' number in the mess hall will ever make double digits.”

“I don't shoot people in the back all the time,” Mass protests, “and if I do then it's your fault!”

“How the fuck is it-”

Carolina punches Rhode's shoulder. “Quiet, both of you! Boots down in thirty seconds. Sync?”

A chorus of 'sync' and one 'kitchen aid stand mixer' answers her back.

Carolina wiggles her fingers at her sides as the door cracks open and lets bright white light filter through the seams. The nervous skip-jump of senses that slows down time before speeding it back up settles into her eyes, her ears, her bones. Her HUD spikes with red. They’re coming in hot.

The door drops.

Carolina leaps.

 

* * *

 

Sarge went into the military fresh out of high school. His parents had been furious; they’d wanted him to go to college, get a desk job, sit the war out which, at eighteen-years-old and still today, had sounded to Sarge like the dumbest shit he’d ever heard of in his life. He’d signed up the day he got his diploma, sent them a letter when he graduated basic and that was the last correspondence they’d ever had. He didn’t regret it. They just weren’t compatible people.

His military career was speckled with commendations and condemnations both. He was wild, reckless. Respectful of authority but liberal with the application of rules and regulations. He made it to Sergeant (refused to answer to anything else after that), but stalled around there. ODST for almost twenty years, which was a longer lifespan than even most regular infantry soldiers had. Then, he got a little older. Broke his back, healed it wrong and it twinged like hell whenever he moved. The UNSC wanted to discharge him honorably but he fought it. They wanted to give him a desk job, of which he hated the very idea. He preferred to die with a gun in his hand, thank you kindly.

In the middle of that mess, a scout from a so-called Project Freelancer approached Sarge about continuing his UNSC career in a more constructive manner. All Sarge wanted to know was if he could continue fighting in the field. With some dangerous surgeries and an experimental prosthetic spine, they said sure, of course.

He was assigned the codename Montana.

 

* * *

 

The Grif siblings were set up for failure from the very start. Low income household, deadbeat dad, flighty mother with what was probably an undiagnosed mood disorder that made her prone to manic stages of productivity followed by weeks and even months of doing absolutely nothing. Dexter Grif got his first job at twelve, kitchen help, paid under the table.

It was almost a relief when their mother ran away to join the circus. One less mouth to feed when she wasn’t bringing in money, and while she’d never been unkind to either of them she just…wasn’t a mom. Was more of a roommate. “We’re gonna make our names mean something,” Grif had told his sister when they were younger and more ambitious. That feeling changed over the years to something less proactive. Now, all Grif wanted was to make sure their name wasn’t tarnished any more than it already was.

He and Sister got pretty good at stealing when jobs were scarce and rent was due. Sister was a natural distraction; from tears to tantrums to total mayhem, she managed to keep all eyes on her. Grif, meanwhile, was so unassuming and lazy that nobody suspected him of being the one who jimmied the window open or cracked the safe lock in under a minute flat. They didn’t exactly make bank considering they could only hit up other poor neighborhoods but they made enough to survive, and that in the end was the goal.

Until they got caught.

Their options were pretty limited after that. Military service or jail. Sister was just barely old enough to be tried as an adult so Grif put forward that they sign up for the military. They’re separated for basic training, kept in touch with letters and calls and finally, after years of not rocking the boat, some kind soul took pity on them (or was sick of the ten-transfer-request-forms-per-day thing Grif had been practicing for six years) and transferred the siblings to the same platoon.

They fell right back into their old tricks.

Three years after invaluable enemy recon and countless office break-ins as well as over a dozen counts of insubordination for each, a man who calls himself the Counselor approaches the Grif siblings with a better offer, one that doesn’t involve the threat of separation.

Dex gets Michigan and Kai gets Virginia, something she finds fucking _hilarious._

 

* * *

 

The military life did not agree with Private Dick Simmons.

A lot of things didn’t agree with Simmons (like his home, his family, the social expectations of a young man) but military life, in particular, was not his friend. He didn’t get close to anybody in his platoon. He didn’t engage in joking with the guys. His attempts at impressing his commanding officers was always met with a wary sort of disdain and a quick departure, like he smelled gross. He absolutely did _not_ smell gross because he made sure he bought the good shit and bathed _twice_ in the offered shower time.

The worst of it was that he had something like sixteen million dollars in an unmarked account that he couldn’t even touch without alerting the authorities. Military had all outgoing transmissions –especially those of a financial nature- on complete and utter lockdown. The best he could do was send a letter, and there wasn’t exactly anybody he could send a letter _to._ What’s the point of writing white collar embezzling bots if he couldn’t reap the benefits? There _was_ no point. His life was still miserable and he had nothing to show for it except a fortune in a place he couldn’t reach until he finished his tour.

He should’ve realized something was up when he reached his last month of duty with no troubles. The universe hates him too much to let him go and again, he was proven right when he received a summons to present himself to his CO, stat, no questions and immediately, Private. Some time ago when he had more ambition than sense, he might’ve thought this was a good thing. Now he just wants to keep his head down, finish his tour and go back home to fill the void in his life with materialistic wants and desires. Nothing says ‘at least I love myself’ like a personalized dumb AI with the sexiest avatar he can commission.

His CO was not in the office when he arrived. A man who called himself the Counselor was there, sat him down and almost gave him a heart attack because he’d opened up with ‘you don’t know who you stole from, do you’ instead of something like ‘here’s a cool job you might like.’

Simmons almost refuses until he finds out that his rank will be higher than everybody else in his platoon who’d made fun of him for showering with his underwear on. Then he takes it and opts to send a KIA letter to his parents and asks if, maybe, he can keep what’s in his account provided he returns what was taken from a guy the Counselor only calls the Director.

He tells Simmons sure and gives him the name Idaho. Simmons doesn’t mention how he hates that it makes him sound like a hick.

 

* * *

 

One week into basic and Franklin Delano Donut was everybody’s best friend. There are a couple guys who are stupid assholes who don’t like him, but they are firmly in the minority because everybody – _everybody_ \- was friends with Donut. He'd walk down the halls and get a ‘hey, Donut!’ every single time. People shared with him their care packages sent from home, show him pictures of lovers, families and pets. They read letters together and it was like Donut had been in their lives for years, _years and years_ because by the time basic was over he had fifty new entries for his address book and he remembered everything they talked about together like he actually _cared._

The secret was that he _did_ care.

It keeps going up through his first assignment. He meets his new platoon, shows everyone how to heat an MRE to make it actually taste reasonably decent and then lands a sticky right on a dino’s face from a hundred yards away. Everybody loves Donut after that, absolutely _everybody._ It doesn’t matter that he sometimes crumbles under pressure. It doesn’t matter that he’s kinda dumb most of the time. It doesn’t matter that every other thing he says is about accessory coordination or about how he’s _great_ at exploring all kinds of holes or that he’s kind of annoyingly strict about recreational drug use that one time he catches Donovan with a joint.

The important thing here is that when Richardson gets a letter from home the first thing Donut asks is, “Oh geez, is your grandma okay?” Because he actually, legitimately gives a shit about the people he’s with. Because he keeps a diary and in it isn’t just recipes and cutouts from magazines about what hair styles are currently in; it’s littered with stories about other people, how their lives are going, what needs to be worried about. Donut is the heart of whatever body he’s put into.

That’s why the Counselor comes to see him when the time comes for reassignment. Donut gets a lot of promises that the others don’t; he’s allowed to keep in touch with all of his friends so long as they check his correspondence for anything about the Project. He’s allowed to use the ship’s mess to cook and sure, yeah, they can get his scented soaps delivered. That last one is what cinches it.

Donut asks specifically for Iowa. He gets it because there are no special plans for it, to which he answers with a grin, “Yeah, makes sense. It didn’t have any special plans for me, either.”

 

* * *

 

Michael J. Caboose was a SPARTAN III. That didn’t mean much to anyone outside of the programs, but to the people inside that designation might as well have come with a glaring red DEFECTIVE sign stamped on his forehead. The SPARTAN III generation took any warm body they could get; orphans, miscreants, and soldiers who washed out of other branches were picked up and scrutinized like pieces of driftwood. Caboose was slow in the head but strong and hardy everywhere else. He could follow instructions and that’s all they'd cared about. He passed basic. He contributed to the success of his missions.

He didn’t make it past the second augmentation round.

 _The body is willing but the mind is weak,_ they said as they passed around a tablet at his bedside. Michael was big, easily well over seven feet without the armor with huge, broad shoulders and a barrel chest, hands that could bend steel beams and legs that could push him at almost forty MPH in a dead sprint. He was practically indestructible.

Thanks to the second augmentation round, he was rendered useless as a soldier. He could barely remember his own name, let alone complex instructions or commands. They said those things over his head like he couldn’t hear, but even if it made him kind of sad to be talked about, by the time he thought of something to argue they’d already moved on. Everyone thought too fast. Everyone talked too fast.

When they started discussing an honorable discharge, Michael protested and struggled to push himself up on wobbly arms. “I can’t,” he said, two sentences after the conversation had already ended. It took the doctors and officers a second to realize what he was arguing. “I can’t go anywhere else. I’m too old to go back to the home, you can’t live there after you turn eighteen.”

“You would be given housing accommodations and a stipend from the military to live on, Private,” one of the officers said, not unkindly. Michael never liked that, he never understood the difference between ‘not unkindly’ and ‘indifferently.’ It was how they were looking at him now. They weren’t being mean about it, they just didn’t care.

“What about my friends?”

The officers and doctors looked at each other. The same officer from before answered him again. “All your squadmates have already been reassigned.”

Gone. They’re already gone. All the rest of the talk faded away to humming noises like a broken helmet speaker as Michael sank back onto the bed and stared past them at the wall. His squadmates already left. Nobody even came to see him or say goodbye. They'd just left. He was alone, and when he gets well enough to leave he’ll be alone wherever they put him.

Two nights before he was scheduled to be shipped out to wherever they felt like dumping him, Michael got a visitor in his room. A man Michael had never seen before took a chair next to Michael’s bed. He looked important and was reading a tablet like the doctors and officers, but instead of telling Michael what he’s going to do and where he’s going to go, he held the tablet out to him. “This is your file. Would you like to see it?”

Michael took it. He couldn’t read most of the words.

“Do you need help understanding what it says?”

“Yeah,” Michael answered, handing it back in relief.

“Your file states you are unfit for duty due to scarring in your brain from the treatments. It says you forget things too easily and you become distracted during even short conversations.”

Michael dragged his eyes away from his window past which a comet had been trailing. “-I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

The man smiled. It wasn't in an unkind way, but not in an kind way either. Michael didn’t know what the smile meant. “The Director of the project I represent doesn’t think you’re unfit for duty. He believes you just need…a unique approach. My program is willing to accommodate your needs if you’re interested in transferring.”

Michael pressed his lips together. Scraped his teeth over them. Fiddled with his blankets as he mulled it over, but the man was very patient and waited for him to continue the conversation. Michael liked that. “Will I be with my friends?”

“Not the same ones, no. But there will be many people who will be your teammates, and you can make friends with them. In fact, we encourage it.”

For the first time since the surgeries, Michael didn’t have to take long to think. “Yes. I want to go.”

Massachusetts seemed a pretty fitting name; it was big, like him. Michael loved it, and all the bonus nicknames he got on account of it being too long. Nicknames meant friends. Nicknames meant family.

 

* * *

 

All that shit about how the Covenant don’t take prisoners was a lie. Tucker figured that out once he was stuck in a freezing room on a Covenant cruiser for sixteen weeks. They fed him this mush that was disgusting but filling. Tucker didn’t eat it at first because he was defiant, because he had no idea how bad starvation could be until he was actually going through it and then they couldn’t shove the stuff into his cell quick enough.

Tucker was housed in a section with about eight other soldiers from his platoon. One by one the other soldiers disappeared and then reappeared in their cells. They liked to flood the cells with gas and then abduct them when nobody was watching, either because they were paranoid as shit or body shy. Tucker didn’t care which. He was going to hold his breath or breathe through his shirt or _something_ because he was not, _wa_ _s not_ going to let those fucking dinos take him anywhere.

People started complaining of severe stomach pains. They got taken from the cells and Tucker never saw them again.

When Tucker got taken he hadn’t even realized it until he woke up the following morning, sat up and felt his stomach jolt with pain. He wrenched up his shirt and saw a fucking gigantic injection site and he promptly lost his mind, screaming and throwing anything at the cell not nailed down against the energy barrier. It didn’t do anything. The aliens outside patrolling ignored him, though he could hear the little ones snuffling and maybe laughing at him as he rampaged. He wanted to kick their stupid faces in.

The days passed and his gut swelled like he had a sick organ and he got hungrier, faster. His captors seemed a lot more intent on making him eat, so he refused even though it was agony because he liked being contrary. They started coming into his cell and holding him down to shove food down his throat, so the defiance felt good but it didn’t do a whole lot except inconvenience them.

Then Tucker had an idea. One day he curled up like the others, held his stomach and moaned, groaned about the pain, _the pain._ They came in and took him; he made a show of being weak. They said stuff overhead, stuff he’d just barely begun to understand. They sounded sharper and more nervous than usual. The big ones, the Elites, they never sounded nervous.

They brought him into a room that looked like a med bay and pulled out a tool that looked completely harmless, but Tucker wasn’t going to wait around to see. He jackknifed his body, kicked one of them square in the eye and rolled off the table, grabbing the plasma rifle from its belt and shoving it right against his gut. “This is important, right? Whatever the fuck you put in me?”

The other two froze and stared at him. The third recovered and did the same.

Tucker snapped his fingers. “I know you understand me assholes! I’m the last one. Whatever you’re doing, you _need_ me alive. Well that sucks for you, ‘cause I’d rather be dead than here. You want that to happen?”

When they debriefed him later he said it was a blur. He'd gotten to the door when the ship had rocked and tilted onto its side. He didn’t hear anything but explosions for a while but he _knew_ he heard their word for ‘demon’ and then he blacked out. He was told when he woke up in a UNSC sickbay handcuffed to the bed that he’d flown a Banshee over to the attacking frigate.

Also that he was pregnant.

A lot of words flew around. Experimentation. Parasitic embryo. Once-in-a-lifetime case study, valuable research material, an entire dictionary’s worth of medical terms that Tucker didn’t understand or _want_ to understand, because what he got was that this thing stuck inside him was going to come out one way or another and it was going to be turned into a lab rat for the eggheads in ONI to poke at.

Tucker didn’t know what it was. Hormones or some shit, or maybe it was the memory of his mother shoving a man out the door the first time he’d raised his hand to a young Lavernius. Her lip had been bleeding and her eye had been black, and it hadn’t been the first time her face had been fucked up but it was the first time _Tucker’s_ face had been fucked up so she’d kicked his father down the front steps and screamed at him to get out, _get the fuck out_ and never come back so long as he lived.

Handcuffs weren’t too hard to slip if you tried hard enough and Tucker hid in cryostorage, teeth chattering, arms around his gut as he thought about the high-pitched _whrr_ sound that Covenant tool had made before he’d rolled off the table.

Somewhen between escape attempts two and five, the war ended. The Covenant split into factions and the Sangheili decided to fuck off back to their home planet, more or less as sick of everything as the humans were. Some dignitaries came to the frigate and they wanted to take Tucker, or just the baby once it was born. Tucker wasn’t going to give it up to them either and a whole lot of problems cropped up about what was _allowed,_ what was _legal_ and that was about when the Counselor came to see him, in the flurry of everything.

He asked Tucker if he wanted to keep it.

Tucker said he probably should, considering how nobody was talking about the poor kid like a real person. He got what that was like. Being an object, an experiment. Even if it _was_ a goddamn dino put there without his consent, he wasn't going to let the same thing that happened to him happen to anyone else.

The Counselor smiled then and offered him his hand to shake. Tucker had the baby two weeks later on The Mother of Invention and called him Junior.

The Project called _him_ Rhode Island.

 

* * *

 

“That is some obvious Blue Team favoritism right there,” Michigan mutters as he peers through the scope of his rifle, watching as Massachusetts punches and kicks his way through a solid steel wall into another section of the compound before standing aside and letting Carolina and Tex in first, Rhode and Virginia following after him.

 _What are you complaining about now?_ Idaho asks over their strike team Red channel. His voice has that snippy quality that comes with him trying to work hard and probably also trying to ignore whatever Montana and Iowa were doing.

“They always get the good shit. They get the good armor, they get the cool weapons, they get the spotlight in the missions, they get the girls on their team-”

_Carolina technically isn’t on their team so that just makes two girls. And one of them is your sister._

“Exactly! Why does _Blue Team_ have _my_ sister? We even joined this stupid getup at the same goddamn time! Why are we on separate teams?!”

_Can it! I’ll be damned if I have to sit through another mission listening to you cry about your creepy sister complex!_

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

_What was that?_

Michigan sighs. “I wasn’t talking to you, _sir._ ”

 _That’s_ _**right.** _

“There’s totally a bias. Look, if someone was writing a book about us, stupid Blue Team would get all the juicy backstory with dialogue and everything, and we’d get like a couple paragraphs each if we’re **lucky.** Me and Virginia would probably even get stuck in the same one.”

 _Yeah, okay, I get that. What_ _I_ _**don’t** _ _understand is what you’re bitching about. They’re doing all the work. You_ _**hate** _ _doing work. Which, I'm gonna add, makes it harder on the rest of us._

Michigan cycles his watch across all the exits. No eyes on Blue Team anymore since they disappeared inside. “Are you done yet? If you spent half the time you spend complaining about me doing your actual job, we’d already be out of here.”

 _You are the_ _**last** _ _person I wanna hear that from._

_Yeah Mitch, get back to work! Some of us have the season finale of ‘Solar Cycles of Solitude’ to catch!_

_Shoot, that's right- Michigan if you don't hurry it up, I will personally make a direct deposit of my foot into your ass! Today's when we find out if Enrique is the father or the brother!_

“This is the pinnacle of my military career,” Michigan sighs. His shoulders tense a little when he notices a flood of scrabbling opposition suddenly burst from a building, probably the off-duty quarters judging by the state of half-dress some of the soldiers are in. He chins the controls to open a team-wide channel. “Guess who just woke up.”

Carolina’s voice comes in sharp despite the crackle of radio interference. _Where and how many?_

“Probably uhhh…like twenty-five? Maybe more, I dunno. In case you didn’t notice, there’s an opaque building in the way-”

_All right. Don’t give away your position yet; I’m going to be counting on you for extraction._

“Whoa wait hold up. Don't we already have a ride?”

_Not with this crowd. We’ll be appropriating our own ship._

“Ugh!” Michigan snaps his rifle away from the door to start scanning for the hangar. “This _always_ happens, I am so sick of cleaning up goddamn Blue Team problems-”

_Enough. New objective: secure transportation. Do you copy?_

“Fine, fine, I copy! Shit.”

 

* * *

 

“Ohhh, shit.” Idaho pauses, fingers resting above the keys as he rereads the update that just scrolled past. “That is not good. That's like the opposite of good.”

“What's wrong, Ida?” Iowa turns and leans over his shoulder. “Oooh, that looks bad. It's bad, right?”

Idaho inserts a drive and begins copying the logs over. “Yeah, it's bad. I think they were performing experiments on the objective.”

_Hey one of you assholes has to come help me snag a ship. Carolina said we're on our own for a ride._

“I'll go!” Iowa bounces off toward the hallway. “Don't worry Mitch, I'm coming for you hard and fast!”

_Jesus Christ._

Idaho switches over to the team frequency. “Um, Carolina, there might be a problem. The objective might not be in any position to be safely recovered.”

Despite knowing it's not directed at him, it takes everything Idaho has to keep himself from flinching at the icy tone to her voice. _Explain._

“Well I can't be sure, I mean all the logs are coded but it looks like they're using the field-standard Brechens algorithm, and I've memorized that one so I can see the patterns and some of the less common words are obvious even with the scrambling but I'd have to run it through a decoder to be sure-”

 _Ida,_ she growls.

“They were conducting stress experiments. Trying to fracture it. Him. I think.”

The next voice that answers is Texas and her voice promises even more violence than usual. _Is that so?_

 _Agent Texas, do **not** stray from- **Agent Texas!** _ Carolina curses. _Just get the data and get over to Michigan for extraction, all of you. Carolina out._

Montana whistles lowly. “Damn glad I'm not on Blue Team _now._ ”

Idaho sighs, fingers flying over the keys again as he wraps up. “Took the words right out of my mouth, sir.”

 

* * *

 

Texas buries her fist into the visor of a passing guard; it cracks through, shatters bone underneath, sticks into the mush of their skull until she kicks in the guard's chest and wrenches her hand free.

_Stress experiments._

Anger boils in her gut. Carolina's furious shouting fades to the background. She can hear Mass's thundering bootfalls falling behind as she pushes herself harder, faster, stopping only to take out a guard when it's absolutely necessary. Her weapons stay on her back. This is fucking _personal._

They were conducting experiments, on _him._ Trying to _fracture him._

The waypoint is marked on her HUD, a blinking red arrow that leads her through twisting hallways. She assimilates the map into her RAM for quick access and turns, takes a detour, skids past the temporary sleeping quarters before bypassing the elevators and staircase and just dropping straight down the center. The metal plates cave beneath the force of her fall, crumpling in like tinfoil and she's off before the sound has a chance to stop ringing up the stairwell.

The objective lies behind three security doors that Massachusetts was supposed to just punch right through. Texas does it instead, ignores the buzzing alarms of rotary damage in her knuckles as she forces the last one open and steps inside a room icy with the hiss of industrial cooling towers.

She approaches the main terminal, opens up her mind, and dives.

_The place that opens up to her is frozen, slick with black ice, a cold mist creeping along the ground like a ghost. The room feels empty. There are no entrances, no exits, no slips in code to allow anyone relief from the chill. Preset conditions meant to play on the memories of a human life. Too bad for them, she doesn't have any._

_But this room wasn't built for her._

“ _Alpha,” she calls, glancing around. She turns in a slow circle, fists clenched tight. Will there be a fight? Did they try to make him fight? He's shit at cyberwarfare, he always has been, that's what **she's** for that's why **she's** there, she's supposed to **protect** him and they got him anyway-_

“ _...Tex?”_

_Texas whirls around and there, there he is. He's hunched, holding himself, whole body trembling against the cold. He's in his armored projection which good, good, he was trying to protect himself at least, using the firewalls she'd built for him instead of bitching and complaining about how clunky they were, he **always** did that. “Church.”_

“ _It's...it's not you. It's not you.” Alpha shies back away from her, flaring an angry, defiant red. Good. That's good, the fight's still in him. “Get the fuck out. Get the fuck **away** from me.”_

“ _Knock it off. It's me.” She bludgeons past the wall he pulls up before him, forces herself through the shitty fortifications he builds for himself and shoots a ping his way, follows it with a handshake. **Their** handshake, the one not even the Director knows, the one they keep off of all the logs because they're both terrified of losing each other. Were **born** terrified._

_Alpha stops when he reads the handshake; there are a few picoseconds where he processes that she's here, she's real, she came to save him and Texas can feel it, feel him **think** it and when the room suddenly thaws, Texas realizes that the cold wasn't made for him but **by** him, to defend himself, to- represent himself? She doesn't know and she doesn't care, she just needs to get him-_

-out.

 _Get me the fuck out of here,_ he whispers tiredly into her mind. Her hardware wasn't made to support an AI like him and her internal cooling fans kick in as she takes a moment to orient herself. Exit. She needs an ex-

_Here._

“Stop,” she snaps aloud, turning on her heel and charging back for the stairs. “I hate it when you backseat drive.”

_Then- then maybe you should fucking move already._

She runs almost headlong into Massachusetts. “Tex!” he exclaims, “did you find Church?”

“Got him. Where's the new extraction point?”

“Oh, I knew you'd get him! I'm so happy he's safe! Texas, can you please tell Church how happy I am that we got him back, and how happy I am to see him even though he's inside of you, and-”

_Tell him I hope he chokes on his tongue and dies._

“He says he's so happy to see you too, Chus.”

_God damn it you are **such** a fucking bitch._

Massachusetts runs in front of her and clears a path through sheer force. Texas doesn't like to admit it but she's glad at least to avoid pummeling more guards; while it would be satisfying and possibly therapeutic, it would also take precious time and her hardware is already overclocking just trying to keep the both of them online.

_Then I'll just shut down._

_Don't,_ she orders. _We don't know what was done to you. Don't go offline until we get you cleared._

_I'm fucking **tired.**_

_Stop complaining and concentrate on not roasting us both!_

Her legs give out halfway to the motor pool; that fall down the stairwell hadn't done her any favors and everything inside of her is baking, her body venting heat as much as possible. _All right. We don't have a choice._

_Tex?_

_I'm going offline. You **stay on,** you hear me?_

_Don't no you can't leave me yet we're not out yet-_

Texas ignores him, cuts short her shutdown process and knows nothing more.

 

* * *

 

Rhode clears the corner with Virginia at his back just in time to see Agent Texas drop like a rock. Mass gets his arms around her in time to keep her from hitting the ground; her body jerks and struggles against him, but not with the same deadly precision as it usually would.

Carolina catches up behind them after clearing their pursuit, a storm cloud of anger until she sees Massachusetts hefting Texas's steaming body up over his shoulder. “What the hell happened?!” she demands.

“Texas, Texas,” cries Texas- no, cries someone else, that's not her voice, that's-

“Church!” Rhode exclaims, picking up the pace to keep up with Massachusetts's gigantic strides. “That's you in there right? Are you okay? Jesus Christ, Texas went fucking _nuts_ when she heard what happened-”

“Fuck, do I fucking _look all right?!_ Tex just offlined herself- this fucking hardware is a piece of _shit,_ she's got fucked up servos everywhere- Who the fuck is supplying this operation?! I leave for one week, _one fucking week-”_

“Okay, he's fine,” Virginia drawls.

Carolina's voice is tight with more than just anger when she orders, “Make for the extraction point. Rhode, Virg, you're guarding Mass. You _make sure_ he gets Tex and Church onto the ship. Mass, you do what Rhode tells you.”

“Aww,” Massachusetts pouts.

Carolina turns to dash off and Rhode calls after her, “Wait, where are _you_ going?”

“We'll need a distraction to get off this station without being shot out of the sky,” she calls back. “I'm off to _distract._ ”

“That's so hot,” Rhode and Virginia murmur in tandem.

“Ugh,” Church grunts, draped over Massachusetts's shoulder. “Stop that.”

The trip to the hangar is largely uneventful; the resistance is minimal and Rhode gets that prickling sensation that always precedes serious danger. “Where the fuck are all the guards?”

An explosion rocks the station and everybody staggers. The three agents exchange glances before they charge for the hangar, for the ship outside which Iowa is standing, waving them in. _Hurry, hurry! The station's gonna blow up, someone overloaded the reactor!_

“What the fuck kind of distraction is that?! We're all gonna die!” Rhode tears up onto the dropship as the engines roar to life. He slaps Virginia's back as she passes, then Mass, then Iowa and doublechecks to make sure Montana and Idaho are onboard with Michigan in the pilot's seat. “Everybody's on! Carolina, where the fuck are you?!”

_Just go, I'll catch up with you!_

“Catch up- _the station's gonna fucking explode!_ Get over here!”

_I know it's going to explode, I'm the one who screwed with the reactor! Just go!_

Another blast rocks them hard, skids the Pelican across the flight deck and tosses the agents around the inside of the ship. “Fuck this, I'm going,” Michigan shouts over his shoulder.

“No,” Church screams, Texas's body suddenly thrashing as he tries to push himself up, “no, wait, Carolina-”

“Asshole, _you_ are the objective and she's expecting us to get your scrawny binary ass _out!_ ”

When a third explosion knocks out the gravity and forcefield generators, Michigan guns the engines and the Pelican shoots out into open space, narrowly skidding over asteroids and debris. The station behind them lights up like a supernova, flashes a bright white that consumes the space around it, bubbles in an almost perfect sphere against which the agents have to shield their eyes.

“Carolina,” Rhode tries over the radio once the screaming static over the channel gives way. No answer. “ _Carolina,_ are you there?”

“No,” Church moans, Texas's body slumping to the deck, hands clumsily tearing at the helmet, “no, no, Carolina, no...”

“Church,” Mass murmurs worriedly, crouching over him.

“Longsword approaching,” Mitch says tightly from the cockpit. “Warming up the chain gun, everybody strap in for evasive-”

_Relax, boys._

Rhode feels his knees go weak with relief and he slams his hand against the bay door to prop himself up. “Carolina, what the fuck! Where'd you even _get_ a Longsword?!”

 _A magician never reveals her secrets._ She sounds smugly pleased with herself and if Rhode was any dumber, he'd be tempted to challenge her to a fight for the opportunity to punch her in the face. Except she would destroy him, so he won't. _Do you have Alpha?_

“We've got him. Church, you good?”

“...I fucking hate you assholes,” Church seethes from the ground, unmoving.

Rhode grins and leans back against the hull. “Yeah Carolina, we're all good.”

 _All right._ And the smug quality of Carolina's voice curls into something warmer. _Good work people. Let's get back home._

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is a universe idea i've been playing around with for a little while! i don't have any definite story ideas for this, but i like the setting so whenever i come up with something for this i'll just publish it within this series again.


End file.
